


it's too bright for you

by Charis



Series: Watch Me Burn [2]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: (did you really expect anything different from me?), Angst, Blindfolds, Bloodplay, Coming Untouched, Cunnilingus, Dom/sub, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Face-Sitting, Femdom, Knifeplay, Mild Painplay, Non-Linear Narrative, Porn with Feelings, Self-Harm, Sub!Athos, autoeroticism, dom!Milady
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 07:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7565206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charis/pseuds/Charis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“This,” she says, laying the blade in his upturned palms, “is mine.” A possessive hand smoothes over his chest, “As is this. Take good care of them both until I return, husband; I’ll be most upset if you damage either.”</i> </p>
<p>What can he do but obey her words?</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's too bright for you

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Swellie for letting me play in her AU, and for sanity checks and flailing and giving me the kick I needed to sort the end out.
> 
> Title from Apocalyptica's "Faraway Vol. 2".

It’s been six days since she had left the city, and though he should be well-used to her absences after how much of their years have been spent apart, he finds himself all too acutely aware of it, like a hollow space he can’t stop prodding at. Perhaps it’s how they’ve come together since he dragged her back to Paris, whether the frequency or the circumstances, but whatever the cause he does not know that he has missed her so greatly before.

She had noticed it, though; she’s always been uncommonly perceptive, and it’s small wonder she had come up with a solution. In the years he thought her dead he’d carried her with him in the form of that locket now lost, and perhaps she had known his need from the moment she found it about his neck to leave him that glove at the crossroads. She leaves him more now, able to see how he needs it: her scarf tucked around his throat, with its fading floral fragrance, is but one of those gifts.

In the privacy of his rooms, he brings out the others.

Beneath leather and linen, the marks she had put on his skin have begun to fade, as they had both known would happen. The memory of her putting them there makes him shiver even now, recalling the sting of the blade and the soothing softness of her mouth following it. At first their presence had been a sharp reminder every time his clothes shifted over half-healed flesh, but after the better part of a week he no longer feels them, and he needs that to change -- needs those reminders of her presence when she’s far away and he does not know when she’ll return. Fortunately, she had left him a way to remedy that.

_(“This,” she says, laying the blade in his upturned palms, “is mine.” A possessive hand smoothes over his chest, eliciting a hiss when it presses against the shallow line she’d carved into his skin last night. “As is this. Take good care of them both until I return, husband; I’ll be most upset if you damage either.”_

_He closes his eyes, leans into her touch, chases the frisson of pain as it becomes pleasure when she drags the edge of one nail against the wound. “I promise.”)_

The knife is a small one, almost delicate, made for a woman’s hands instead of his own larger ones. He runs his fingers over the carved wooden hilt before testing the edge against his thumb. It’s wickedly sharp; he suspects the lightest of pressure would split even the sword callus there. The thought summons up an image of Anne, sitting there taking honing stone to the steel, and despite himself he shivers. He needs this.

He needs this, and it makes his hands clumsy as he sheds his clothing, fumbling at buttons in his haste. Naked, he sprawls upon his bed, taking the knife in hand once more as he studied the wounds that cross his body, pink and red against a backdrop of older scars and unmarked skin. His breath has quickened slightly in anticipation, though his cock still lies quiescent between his thighs.

There's a line across the outside of one thigh, half-hidden by hair, and when he sets the knife to skin he starts there. For a moment there is nothing, just the faintest prickle of cool steel, and then fire follows -- a flash of agony that fades quickly to a dull throb. He's barely broken skin, doesn't dare do more, and yet the memory of this -- her hands, her scent, the low murmur of her voice -- is closer than she’s been in all their time apart.

_(Her skirts whisper across the floor as she moves, a counterpoint to the click of bootheels against wood. She doesn’t touch him, stays just beyond him where he kneels on the floor, and he has to fight to keep his hands lax and still upon his knees when they itch to reach for her. This close she’s more ghost than woman, the waft of her perfume and the air stirred up by her motion all he has of her. He wants to call out to her almost as badly as he wants to reach, but this is not the first time they have played this game and he knows doing so will just prolong his torment and so he waits, breathes, concentrates on what little of her his senses can bring him._

_“Good,” she murmurs, drawing closer. One hand slides into his hair, fingertips stroking against his scalp, and he fights not to lean into the contact. “Very good. Tell me, husband -- what do you need from me?”_

__Everything, _he thinks,_ anything you will give me, _but the words cannot bubble up from the silent still place he’s found and he does not respond. The hand in his hair tightens, yanks his head back so his eyes meet hers, and the shock of pain jolts him from the depths._

_“Answer me,” she commands, and though her voice is no louder the sound is still a snap across his senses, just as sharply as if she’d struck him._

_And he doesn’t want her to go, but he can’t say that, because they both know it’s impossible. “Leave me something of you,” he blurts out, “so that I know this was real --”_ So that I know _you’re_ real, that you’ll come back, that this isn’t all a dream and a nightmare, _he thinks, but she’s already pulled away, crossed the room to open the coffer she keeps her tools of the trade in. He cannot see what she retrieves; when she returns she sinks to the floor before him, skirts pooling about her, and her hands are hidden in the fabric. Her eyes lock with his and he cannot look away._

_“Do you trust me, Athos?” Her voice is quiet once again; as closely attuned to her as he is, he cannot miss the hesitation beneath. Small wonder, when it is so weighty a question._

_He closes his eyes, turns his head into the palm that lifts to rest against his cheek and breathes her in, breaths the answer out without hesitation. “Yes.”)_

Another cut, another -- slowly, slowly, because there are only so many wounds and he made a promise, and to break it would be unthinkable. But he drags the flat of the knife against his belly before he renews the mark there, and remembers the sweep of her tongue against the tender flesh, the blood streaking her pale skin when she’d lifted her head once more. His thumb cannot mimic the sensation but he paints the blood across his skin and lets the memories wash over him, and feels want shiver along his nerves, heat unfurl low in his gut.

It’s better, but it’s not enough; arousal remains maddeningly just out of reach when he is all too aware of how far away she is and his thoughts will not be still. Even if he does this at her behest, with her blessing, it’s not the same. Frustrated, he sets the knife aside and casts about for something to put his mind where it needs to be.

Her scarf, crumpled atop his discarded clothes, sparks an idea. He rolls off the bed to retrieve it, hissing at the sting of fresh wounds as he does so. The linen is soft against his fingertips as he lays it out, folds it along the length, in half and half again before tying it securely over his eyes.

He lies back again, letting his senses adjust to this temporary blindness -- lies back and breathes, and every breath brings with it the scent of flowers and of her, and as one hand splays across the gash that traverses his stomach and the other finds the knife again, his mind quiets and he falls deeper into memory.

_(His hands are stretched above his head, clinging to the frame of the bed like a lifeline. He is not permitted to touch her and it is maddening when she is scarcely touching him either; the kisses of her blade and her mouth alternate, painting two wholly different kinds of fire along his skin. The thought of the marks he will carry when this is done makes his aching cock throb all the harder._

_She pauses, though, with the steel stroking tendons pulled tight in his throat, and suddenly he’s back in Pinon, turning his face into her chest as he burns, and around them his home burns and he doesn’t care -- the world could burn down around them and he wouldn’t care because she is alive,_ alive _, and for the first time in five years the world feels_ right _. He aches, the still-familiar warmth of her body curled against his, yearns for more, the heat of her around him and the taste of her in his mouth, anything to convince him this isn’t a dream, isn’t --_

_A flash of pain as she twists his nipple snaps him back to the present. There is no fire now but the one raging in his body, no angry ghost made flesh, only the wife he found and brought home again, her mouth red and her eyes bright all he can see for an instant before she kisses him, fierce and hungry. They are in Paris, not Pinon, and her teeth are closing on his lower lip, her fingers gentling in contrast to the biting demand of the kiss, and he surrenders as she grounds him and makes him fly free all at once.)_

Higher still, he slices a slow line of fire along his ribs. He is hard now, that elusive arousal found in this dizzying mix of past and present, but with his mind so full of her he has no need to touch -- would find it strange when she had not done so, concentrating instead on the knife parting skin. Her face had been intense, inscrutable, her hands deft and delicate as she’d traced his body, alternating flesh and steel in a way that had left him trembling and pleading for more. And his hands are nothing like hers, but with the scarf as an anchor it’s easy to detach, to forget that the scrape of his calluses is not the scratch of her nails and it is his hands and not her own guiding the blade over his body, marking him outwardly as hers in a way that matches how deeply she's always been carved into his soul.

The knife bites deeper -- not too deep, never too deep, she does this not to cause injury but to leave a part of herself with him, no matter how far she goes -- and his breath catches in his throat before tumbling free in a helpless moan. Blood trickles down his chest, the whisper of her hair dragging across his skin, and he arches up, desperate for more, only to be denied. He is straining, wanting to reach but unwilling to do it, not when he's not allowed to -- no, not like this, not when he must be patient. She will only deny him further if he touches her without leave.

“Please,” he gasps out, “please --”

_(“Hush,” she whispers; her fingers brush over his brow in what is no doubt meant to be a soothing motion, but he is on fire and needs more, needs her, and his breath comes out in a desperate whine as he clutches the wooden slats tighter, fighting the nearly-overwhelming desire to fill his hands with her flesh._

_Her heat leaves him; he cries out, lost, but she's making soft sounds of reassurance over the unmistakable rustle of fabric, and when she returns her bare calf pressed against his shoulder and his breath rushes out in a sigh of relief. “Please,” he begs again, not even certain what he’s asking for, and she pushes sweat-sodden hair back from his face._

_“What would they think if they saw you now? The finest of France’s swordsmen, undone by a mere woman.” She laughs, low and dangerous, and the sound sends just as much of a frisson of excitement shivering along his nerves as the edge of one nail scraping against his mouth. He parts his lips but she just traces over them, pulls her hand away when he tries to capture her fingers. “Enough of that. Your sword doesn't interest me, and I have a far better use for your mouth.”)_

And it blurs together -- god, it all blurs together, because he knows she’s not there and he knows those are his own hands, but his senses are tangled in the scarf and the knife and the memory of her thighs bracketing his head and her cunt beckoning, and the taste of her is all but there on his tongue, and he arches his neck, lost in the memory of breathing her in before she’d ground down against his face. He wants to burrow into her, drink her down forever; he wants to reach for her hips, pull her so close he can no longer breath, but she hasn't given him leave and so he clutches at the wood and works at her with his mouth and revels in the exquisite pain-pleasure as her hands push down on the long slashes criss-crossing his chest to steady herself -- and she’s not there, that’s his own hand is pressing at the cuts, the other still clinging to the bed. She’s not there but she _is_ , and he gasps and writhes and shudders and spends to nothing more than a memory and a dream.

_(She pulls away, slides down his body, and he can’t stop the hiss from escaping as she brushes against the slashes. He’s a mess, blood and sweat and the sticky splatter of his own spend, his face wet from her cunt and his tears, but he cannot find it in himself to move. It doesn’t seem to bother her; she kisses him as her mouth comes level with his, almost chastely, before she rises. Only now does he reach for her, desperate not to lose her warmth again, desperate not to forget this --_

_“Shh,” she soothes, from somewhere across the room. There is the clink of pottery, the splash of water, and when she returns it’s to clean him up, gentle strokes of a damp cloth over his skin. When he shivers she just runs her free hand down his body, as one might gentle a frightened horse, lets him lean into her and breathe until the trembling stops and he is himself once more. She’s never gentle except in these moments, and he relishes that gift, the idea that he sees a part of her no one else does._

_“Don’t leave me.” It slips out unbidden, from the part of his mind that is still returning to earth, and the moment he says it he wishes he had bitten it back, but she’s looking down at him with an expression he cannot quite decipher, something angry and pleased all at once. But she says nothing, just finishes cleaning them both up and then curls herself around him. There is something nagging at the edge of his thoughts, something he wants to say, but his mind is foggy with exhaustion and he cannot find the words before sleep drags him under.)_

He comes back to himself as he had woken that next morning, alone in his bed. His fingers are sore when he manages to uncurl them from around the bedframe, and he flexes them to work the feeling back in as he pulls off the scarf with the other. The dim light is almost too much after the darkness of being blindfolded, leaves him blinking owlishly as he regains his bearings. He is filthy, and by the angle of the sun on the floorboards it is well into morning, and so he forced himself upright. The act of cleaning himself brings with it the echo of her touch once again; it would be easy to sink back into the memories but he has no time to linger. Duty calls, and no matter what else he may become (whatever else he may wish to be) he is still a creature of duty.

As he dresses he can feel the drag of fabric across the fresh cuts, a whisper of her touch, and the sensation steadies him anew. She may be leagues away but she’s here, too, and the knife he tucks into his boot and the scarf he knots around his neck are a promise to return that he has to believe, as he has to believe they both want this. (But she had come back with him, come back from England no matter how he’d failed her time and again, and surely that means she chose him. Surely everything means she continues to choose him, to _want_ him, as he has wanted her from that first glimpse and despite everything.)

This is real, he reminds himself; as real as the weight of the small blade against his calf, as real as the ache of those marks on his skin. This is real, and she will return, and with that thought he can face the rest of the world.

_(“Look at me.” Her voice is an implacable demand and his eyes snap up before he even registers the words. There is something wild and tender in her gaze, utterly unexpected, and it makes him ache in a way equally unanticipated, makes him want to claw at his chest and lay his naked heart at her feet and curl up inside hers forever._

_But she says nothing, and he swallows past the sudden tightness in his throat and reaches for her, and she lets him draw her down, settling astride his legs so that their faces are a breath apart. “Anne --” he begins but breaks off, not knowing what to say. Words seem paltry after the unspoken communication of before_

_“Quiet,” she orders, but the kiss which follows the demand is all the promise he could hope for, and they have never been good with words.)_

She is with him as he opens the door, and steps out into the day.


End file.
